Grand Theft Auto V, crass comedy in a crazy world

Grand Theft Auto V is the first game in Rockstar’s entire hooker-killing franchise that I’ve actually completed, and by that I mean I successfully played all of its main story missions, picked my A, B, or C choice for the finale, and watched the lengthy end credits–over thirty-five minutes long–scroll by as I pondered my collective time and experience as three unsavory souls stuck in Los Santos. And…exhale. Considering I still can’t even get past the second mission in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, this is a real, genuine accomplishment, a feat worth featuring.

To be honest, I don’t think much overall about GTA V. Now, please be sure to read that sentence a second time before you blow a blood vessel; I did not say “I don’t think much overall of GTA V,” but rather about. It’s kind of everything I expected it to be based on past experiences with the franchise, and I feel like it went through all the motions, and I went with it, a mute player. If you must know, I enjoyed what I played of Grand Theft Auto III, really dug Vice City for its vibe and tunes, and never got too far in San Andreas. Also, Chinatown Wars is a surprisingly good time, but quite a different beast from its bigger siblings. Truthfully, Saints Row: The Third is more my kind of freedom.

The story in GTA V revolves around three men: former bank robber Michael Townley, repo man Franklin Clinton, and uncontrollable psychopath Trevor Philips. They have their own personal stories to see unfold, but they also eventually all get mixed up in the same nefarious business, which involves running a bunch of heists and making some serious moolah. It’s clearly a videogame story, as things happen so that the player can take part in extravagant setups and scenarios and leap from tall buildings and blow up important locations and all that. A few missions feel like they just came up with some third part to play, spur of the moment, so all three protagonists could be there, even if there was absolutely no need to bring the greenhorn Franklin along. Of the three main characters, I was most disappointed in Franklin’s overall journey, as it seemed like the whole “other guy got the girl” subplot fizzled within the game’s first hour. Michael has heavy family stuff that gets resolved, but not in a way that fills me with confidence. And Trevor…well, he’s pure crazy, a lot of fun to watch, but just walking insanity, and GTA V would actually be a lesser game without him to keep everyone on their toes.

The open-world gameplay in GTA V is everything you’d come to expect from the company that certainly had a big hand in creating the genre. When you’re not accepting main story missions as either of the three gruff dudes, you can drive around the sprawling city and its outskirts, play a round of golf or tennis, do some yoga, get a haircut, shop for new clothes, invest in buildings, visit the strip club, surf the Internet, watch TV or a movie, take the dog for a walk, and so on and so on. There’s quite a lot of miscellaneous, nontrivial time-wasters for those wanting just a bite of action, as well as larger side missions in the forms of Strangers and Freaks. Random events like “Stop that purse snatcher!” occur from time to time, and you can also just stand still and watch the world go by or sit in your car listening to your favorite station. I found a lot of the side stuff more interesting than the main missions, as they are clearly trying to be big and bombastic, and there’s always an excuse for a gunfight, no matter what the scenario. Thankfully, thanks to a rather easy auto-aim feature, shooting down gang member after gang member is no big thing, and probably the biggest aid I had for completing this game next to Franklin’s bullet time mode when driving.

Let me talk briefly about the collectibles scattered around and outside of Los Santos, as I only stumbled across one during my entire criminal career. Which is very similar to my experience in finding those golden film reels in L.A. Noire. Either they are extremely well-hidden or I’m going blind, a likely case. According to the Internet, there’s a ton of things to find: Spaceship Parts, Stunt Jumps, Letter Scraps, Hidden Packages, and more. I found a single Letter Scrap, which ties into the Mystery of Leonora Johnson side quest–and that’s it. I started the missions that opened up the ability to find Spaceship Parts, but never came across them, and I felt like I did a lot of “off the path” exploring, mostly because I was trying to hide from cops, and changing elevation is a vital tactic.

A lot of material in GTA V is extremely off-putting, and for good reason. Rockstar’s treatment and regard of women is abysmal. If they aren’t there to either have sex with the main characters or sex with someone else to anger the main characters, then they are on their way. Take Michael’s family. He has a wife and a daughter. His wife is sleeping with her yoga instructor, and his daughter wants to get into porn. Take Trevor. Past the early intro scenes, you first truly meet him as he’s having sex with meth head Ashley, who never plays a further part in the game. Later, he kidnaps a man’s wife and begins to have a relationship with her. And lastly, take Franklin. He lives with his aunt, who self-describes herself as a “new age feminist,” and the two are constantly bickering. I don’t recall a single time that I returned home as Franklin that she wasn’t whining or complaining loudly from the other room. He has a childhood friend Tonya Wiggins, who is a crack addict. At first, it seems like he’s a man all about winning back his ex-girlfriend Tanisha Jackson, but that plot fizzles very quickly, so much that her sudden appearance near the game’s end was befuddling. Aside from these, there’s a few other women that stand out: Devin Weston’s lawyer Molly Schultz, the athletic MaryAnne Quinn, and celebrity-crazy old Mrs. Thornhill. In short, why couldn’t there have been a female gang leader or a woman working closely with Michael to keep his identity better hidden? Or some role more involved. Because to Rockstar, men do the ruling.

Early on, I actually watched some in-game TV, something I never even attempted before in Grand Theft Auto IV, despite a lot of people going gaga over the fact that such a large and completely skippable thing existed way back then. I ended up watching “Gordon Moorehead”, an animated detective drama radio show that looks innocent enough, that is until anyone starts speaking. I don’t recall the specifics of the episode’s story, just the constant degradation of Gordon Moorehead’s assistant Molly Malmstein, who Moorehead constantly treating her as a woman of little intelligence, often slapping her. I think the show is trying to to poke fun at sexism and misogyny, but actually just reinforces it all the way. It’s extremely disappointing; you literally can’t go anywhere in Los Santos without some knock against women.

I dunno. Looking back over this post, maybe I do think a lot about GTA V, just nothing too great. It’s got its problems, but it also felt very routine and predictable and crass for no good reason. The use of crude language, especially. I played a single post-credits mission, but haven’t really gone back to do any further exploring or money spending, and I just don’t really see myself getting back into the swing of things. I guess I’ve had my fill.

2013 Game Review Haiku, #41 – Grand Theft Auto V

Three bad men team up
For the biggest score ever
Drive, shoot, open world

–

These little haikus proved to be quite popular in 2012, so I’m gonna keep them going for another year. Or until I get bored with them. Whatever comes first. If you want to read more words about these games that I’m beating, just search around on Grinding Down. I’m sure I’ve talked about them here or there at some point. Anyways, enjoy my videogamey take on Japanese poetry.

Los Santos, a virtual playground for Grand Theft Auto V’s motley crew

Originally, I had no plans to get Grand Theft Auto V. I’ve not had a great track record with the franchise over the years, though I always enjoy the scope of the games, especially Vice City and Chinatown Wars. The mission structures and high level of difficulty have always worked against me, and thus I’ve never completed any GTA games. More or less, I play them for a bit, do what few missions I can, and then explore randomly, taking in the radio and sights and all the wee details that Rockstar throw in to make up one living, breathing city, the kind that can feel downright sentient in some spots.

But then, out of nowhere, I suddenly wanted to be in on all the GTA discussion spreading across the Interwebz, and so I went out and bought a copy for the PlayStation 3, which I think speaks oodles for how much I care about my Xbox 360 these days. You could also blame it on the mandatory 8 GB install one needed to perform to play the game on either system, and I have a ton of more free space on the PlayStation 3 than on my dwindling 360’s internal 20 GB, which is nearly full. Another bonus to getting the game on the PS3 is that I can fly some blimp, but I’ve not yet punched in the code to unlock it.

You could normally sum up a GTA game like so: the life of a criminal. Except in this case, it’s the lives of three criminals–Franklin, Michael, and Trevor. At the start of the game, you come to learn about Franklin and Michael a bit, eventually seeing how they become amiable with one another. Franklin has some gang history problems, and Michael is a retired bank-robber with a difficult family. They are difficult in that his wife, his daughter, and his son are all extremely shitty people. Michael also has a history with Trevor, a wild-eyed man that is the very definition of unstable. Eventually, through a series of crimes and plot twists, the three come together to…well, I still don’t actually know. Pull off more crimes? Bury the hatchet? Stick it to the Man? I guess I’ll find out in a few more missions, as I’m just before the second heist, which seems like a doozy, the sort that goes bad from the first breath. But we’ll see. I don’t expect Grand Theft Auto V‘s story to go anywhere astounding; I’m more interested if they resolve a lot of the sub-plots they keep hinting at (Michael’s troubles with his family, Franklin’s love not feeling the love, Trevor’s drug problems).

At only just over 25% completion, I actually think it is safe to say that Grand Theft Auto V might be the first GTA game I will ever complete. This is due to a better checkpoint system, as well as auto-aiming when firing weapons, which helps me immensely. The missions vary from chasing after someone in a vehicle, to sneaking through a building, to flying planes, to performing mundane tasks like towing cars and using a crane to lift cargo crates, and so on. Some missions are more fun than others. There’s also side missions, which venture into stranger territory, as well as random events. You can totally just not do anything specifically, too, and I’ve speak some good time just walking around, looking at graffiti and store signs and so on. Golf, tennis, barber shops, TV, movies, yoga, the Internet, strip clubs–there are a lot of non-mission distractions to spice up your mindless exploring. The heists are neat as a concept, but from the sound of it, there aren’t many in the game, which is a shame, as positioning everyone and setting up the perfect plan is surprisingly enjoyable.

At some point, I will also talk about Grand Theft Auto V and how it portrays women, but today is not the day.

And as for Grand Theft Auto Online, well…there really isn’t much to say. For two days now, I’ve tried connecting and getting online to play, but I kept hitting black screens of death or endless loading animations that eventually just give up and dump me back into the story mode. More frustrating than that is that I can’t even get the game to save the character I create for online play, so I’ve had to recreate her–yes, I said her–each time, and each time I just put less and less care into the matter. Pretty sure by the time I do get to create a character and have it save, I’ll just hit the “randomize” button and go with whatever first pops up. Truthfully, I doubt I’ll do much with the multiplayer stuff, but I am curious to see how it plays out; I can get into my own fun in the main game just fine, thank you very much.

UPDATE: I was able to get online last night, and it looks like the game saved the second character I created, which is a woman named Paula with fiery red hair and no reservation about tossing up the birds. I did the first mission, which was a car race against Lamar and no other players. I beat Lamar, got a bunch of experience for things like RP and JP, ranked up, and then found myself sitting on a loading screen that never went away. My only option after five or six minutes was to quit the game entirely and reload into story mode. I’ve not tried hopping back online since though.